A video surveillance system and an alarm system are complementary systems that are typically deployed together to secure a premises, for example, a home, a business, etc. The video surveillance system records and collects video evidence in the event of a break-in, while an alarm system secures a premises and sends out alerts on detection of intrusions. Due to the complexity of these systems, the surveillance system and the alarm system require installation by professional technicians. Furthermore, since the video surveillance system and the alarm system are two separate systems, merging data from both the systems needs additional software to allow the user to correlate the alarm data with the video data to obtain a complete picture of an intrusion event. The complexities of installing two separate systems and incorporating additional software for merging data output from the two systems increase the cost and negatively impact a fast adoption of such systems for home and business applications.
A conventional alarm system incorporates a master gateway device to which wired or wireless electronic devices, for example, sensors connect. The master gateway device typically includes a communication channel, for example, a phone line, a cellular network adaptor, the internet, etc. The master gateway device relays an alarm signal to a central station or to a user's computing device. Depending on the design of the system, the gateway device can be built into an alarm panel, for example, in the form of a box, or implemented on a separate internet gateway. The conventional design provides one master gateway device per site which controls multiple electronic devices, for example, alarm sensors and other devices for the site.
The video surveillance system architecture is similar to a security setup. The conventional video surveillance system comprises a master unit, for example, a digital video recorder (DVR) that connects to each camera unit by a cable and records and stores the video captured by the camera unit. This video surveillance system architecture is typically configured as a standalone system commonly referred to as a closed-circuit television (CCTV). In recent years, the DVRs have incorporated internet protocol (IP) connectivity to allow for remote viewing and control over the Internet. The alarm system and the video surveillance system complement each other and are both installed to secure a premise. However, because these systems are installed separately and run independent of each other, in order to review any event, a user has to access two separate systems and manually line up data, or install additional integration software to merge the data from both the systems together, which results in inefficiencies and an increase in costs.
Hence, there is a long felt but unresolved need for a method and a system that incorporate a combination of a surveillance system and alarm devices in a single security system to enable ease of installation and simultaneous capture of events and generation of alerts for security and an easy review of events without having to access two separate systems, thereby reducing costs and enabling a fast adoption of a security system for home and business applications. Moreover, there is a need for a method and a system that redirect connection of electronic devices from inactive security systems to active security systems to allow continuous capture of events and generation of alerts for security in a network of security systems. Furthermore, there is a need for a method and a system that enables security systems that are disconnected from a network to transmit simultaneously received event data and alarm data, and alerts to active security systems that are connected to the network. Furthermore, there is a need for a method and a system that sustain an active connection of the security systems to a network for enabling continuous capture of events and generation of alerts for security in a network of security systems.